UNDERSTANDING CONDITIONING: Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 7 PM, Olelo Channel 49 (FOCUS), Hawaii

Now that the elections are over, I can resume my focus on that body of work I am largely known for -- as the premier writer/speaker on exercise and conditioning. I was raised in a “tradition” of exercise -- and so have always observed and studied it before I was aware of what I was doing -- but that has been an integral part of me, since it was my essential exposure and practice in the formative years.

Throughout my life, being around world champion athletes has just been a natural thing, and I’ve talked to more creators of their own disciplines, than most people realize is possible. But the great teachers must first be great students, and not just be teachers -- or students. Integral to any practice is that one eventually becomes their own greatest teacher.

These are the valuable lessons of the many disciplines before they became “professionalized,” which means done mostly for money, status and power. If there is no money, many are no longer interested; those who remain interested, whether there is money in it or not, are the great teachers and students of that field. Those are the people who do what they do because that is who/what they are, and so their very being is their doing. The most familiar of such people are the artists, and other creative types; many are entrepreneurs, creating their own way in life.

Yet the dominant types in contemporary society tend to be the institutional or organizational person -- who finds a place they can fit in and stays in it unless there is an extraordinary event that propels them on to some other path. They will rarely choose their own destiny -- and even think that there is something wrong and foolish about those who do. They are the many bureaucratic personalities -- for which money, status, and power, if they reach the top of the seniority pyramid, is the only reality.

To such people, any new or different idea is regarded as “wrong,” because they haven’t heard it before, and view their role in society as being to defend the status quo -- until they get orders to do otherwise.

Obviously, the most receptive people to new information are the creative types -- who can appreciate the better in the new and different, rather than reject it reflexively. These people are invariably the leaders in any society -- whether they have designations as such. Those who know, can recognize that in the others of whatever field they are the “masters” of -- because they inquire and challenge the very authority of what is known, familiar and established -- with greater confidence than the defenders of the old status quo can muster.

In the field of exercise, I placed the emphasis of importance at the extremities rather than the heart because it seemed to be the only way to exercise all the muscles as though they were one large, integrated muscle. But the further importance of this, which I did not make the central teaching in the video, is that the need and value of exercise is not in making the heart work harder and faster to pump blood (fluids) out to the extremities, but in creating at the extremities, a pumping effect back towards the heart -- because that is the weakness and breakdown in the circulatory system since sedentary lifestyles produce so few of these alternating contractions/relaxations -- that pump the fluids in the tissues back to the heart, thus resulting in the bloated look of people considered to be fat, disabled and diseased.

Most people are not aware of the movements possible at the extremities of the hands, feet and head and Understanding Conditioning, teaches that full articulation and possibility most have not seen before, or if they have, have not realized the essential importance of.